Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-02-24
A BILL TO CONSERVE HUMAN RIGHTS

Ulillln tllo fCi ia
A BILL TO CONSERVE HUMAN RIGHTS.
1t is very late in the legislative session
to expect bill just introduced to be passed
into law. Still, we entertain the hope
that the Frooman bill to defend laborers
from strikers will be taken up, passed and
sent to the Governor. 1t is in the interest
of free labor, of working men, of honest
industry. There is no reason why men
who want to work and succeed in securing
employment should not be protected from
the assaults threats and brutality of those
who think they know better than the
workers themselves what is good for them
The bill provides that it shall be INSIDE
meanor to interfere by threats or otherwise
with worker to induce him to quit his
employment, and it is made unlawful to
conspire to accomplish that end. If it be
said there is law sufficient now to protect
men from assault, it is to be replied that
in fact it does not protect them from the
intimidation, conspiracies, brow-beating
and menacing attitudes of strikers.
There is needed vigorous law to put in
the list of crimes all efforts to drive men
from labor by those whose places they take,
or to drag into strike workmen who have
neither part nor lot in it. As matter of
fact, the labor organizations of the country
have lately assumed the right to do that no
individual would dare attempt Recently
dispatches from New York read: "The
non-union freight handlers were again at
tackled this evening as they were quitting
work at several of the North river piers.
At the Savannah Line pier two or three
men were beaten, pounded and kicked I'M
mercifully. No arrests were made. One
man was assaulted while policeman was
near, but he did not dare to interfere on
account of the crowd" And this is fair
sample of many dispatches, and represents
outrages of like character in this State on
more than one occasion. 1t represents the
disposition to substitute the union" decree
for the rule of the State and the majesty
of free government tendency that must
be cut short, and speedily.
Labor leagues may resolve by night and
by day that they condemn these coercive
methods and are not responsible for them,
but all the world knows they do foster and
encourage them by every movement they
make to drive men from labor. Their
whole course shows that they have no
deep sense of shame over these infractions
of human rights. We shall not be sur
prised even to find some of them con-
demning the bill referred to instead of ap-
plauding it as they should, if they are
true friends of labor For it is no more
nor less than measure to insure the right
of the citizen to work for whom he pleases
and for what wage he pleases. All rights
strikers have in this land the right to
breathe and live and do, to order out and
to order in, rest upon precisely the same
basis. Every time laborers lift hand or
set up a reign of threats and violence to
drive non-strikers from work, they invoke
the same methods against themselves when
the conditions are reversed; they assail
the one shield that assures them of even
the right to strike There is nothing that
can excuse or palliate these attempts to
force men who disagree with strikers, to
join their ranks. Yet the thing is done
and there appears to be inability to reach
the wrong under the present laws, and
hence, we presume, the introduction of the
bill referred to.
1t ought to pass. If it is in conflict with
any human right, the Courts will prevent
its enforcement; if it conserves any nat
ural right, no just man can conscientiously
oppose it. If it will aid in the preserva-
ton of the peace, all men should applaud
it; if present laws are sufficient for the
evil complained OF, then it can do no
harm to pass the bill. There is in all these
strikes more or less of misrule, and lately
an incomprehensible inactivity on the part
of peace officers. A new law is needed to
warn the offenders and prod the negligent,
and this bill appears to move in that direc-
ton and well up to core Of the evil.